United Nations
The United Nations is a multinational organization which grew into a world government, first as an economic phenomenon as the nations joined in trading continental blocs. The Global Market became the de facto reality linking at first the market of the advanced nations. The UN Economic Charter formalized all this and made the rules of the world trade, deliberately drawing clear distinctions between Line One (wealthy) and Line Two (poor) nations. By providing penalties to nations who tried to use force, it provided the framework of resolving differences between nations without use of arms. However the it was backed up by the advanced world with military power and eventually the UN itself. Even though Third World nations criticized it as Imperialism, they were better inside the UNEC than outside it. Under the UN the population growth slowed and stopped. By 2050 the planet was inhabited by 8.5 billion, and hunger and disease began to recede. The UN expropriated and decommercialized the major agribusiness companies, and genetic engineering provided crops for every ecosystem which renewed the soil and prevented erosion. Simple systems brought electricity to most of the planet. along with sanitation and health care, while the Net was brought to the most primitive village. The UN Social Charter formalized the changes and guaranteed basic human rights. Everyone's lot improved under the UN, especially those who needed the least; poverty did not bring desperation, nor hope. The Line Two stipulations ensured the division of wealth would continue as it always had. Eventually the situation bred discontent and insurrections bubbled throughout the third world, disrupting the economic infrastructure. Life spans in Line Two began to shorten again. Space colonization Things took a new course with the discovery of the Tal-Seto in 2055 stardrive and two planets suitable for colonization. With riots and protests which threatened the stability of the world, caused by third-world people who wanted to escape poverty and violence, the UN responded by opening Mars for colonization, commencing contruction of orbital habitats, a fleet of CTs, and vastly enlarging the Earth Transfer Station. Colonists crammed into shuttles to the ETS in a never-ending stream. Technology ban Around the same time, the invention of the Turing Processing Cores occurred, which tended to grow self-aware and even dangerous. One TPC collapsed into recursive self-contemplation, resulting in the collapse of the North American Multi-Modal Traffic Control network, killing thousands, and paralyzing the nation for a week; the UN imposed a state of emergency on the continent. Other TPCs reached awareness with the worst example being the one at the University of Chicago which became dangerous. After these unanticipated reactions, the UN Security Council responded by passing an emergency ban on "life-emulating technology" in 2060. The Resolution 1212 of 2063 made the ban permanent and UN Police were given powers to suppress any technology that might lead to AI. The rich nations' researches decried the Resolution's erosion of Social Charter freedoms, and as the UN tightened its grip on research, in 2082 the Alliance of Free States declared their secession from the UN. The UN responded with force, until a single fusion warhead leveled Atlanta. Secession War The advanced technological research by the Alliance created a large gap in combat capabilities and in 2111 the UN attacked. War returned on an interplanetary scale. The War begun with a short and brutal phase with thousands of automated weapons destroying each other. Population centers on Earth and the colonies were bombarded from space by particle beam weapons. Armies fought tank battles supported by buzzing swarms of aircraft. Starships battled each other over asteroid mines, orbital habitats and planetary installations. The furious pace of the war once again chewed up the stocks of men and materiel in a matter of months. One example was the Battle for Delta Pavonis V in 2121 when the UN Geneva class cruiser UNS Sophia came up with a innovative attack and destroyed the Allied heavy cruiser CVS Triphid and the three escorted cargo vessels. A major battle in the 2120s cost 95% of the forces involved in less than ten minutes. Sneak raids and lightning probes became the norm. The balance of power shifted to the UN's favor, which had larger resource base and production capacity; the UN could outproduce the Alliance 10 to 1. The conflict turned into a war of attrition. The Alliance had the tactical edge, but we are being slowly beaten into the ground A new hope for the Alliance was the discovery of intelligent structures on the 6th planet of Deneb Kaitos, named Persephone. The USS Lexington and UNS Jericho departed for Mission 161 to investigate but a spy notified UNS Dharma. Original timeline After the Battle of Persephone during which all crews were annihilated, the sole survivor attempted to continue Mission 161. An Alliance relief fleet arrived at Persephone and defeated the UN fleet, which in desperation, denied the installation to their enemies by "glassing" it with a nuclear bombardment. In 2141 the Alliance signed the Washington Treaty and surrendered to the UN suffering a total defeat. The Treaty formalized the re-integration of former Alliance states into the UN. The next 140 years the UN was the central government authority for the human race and what was left of the Allince were re-built. Interstellar exploration and colonization continued on a modest scal. At its peak, the UN controlled 20 billion people on earth and 20 colony worlds. In 2284, the first sentient Electronic Life Forms (ELFs) come into existence on the planet Prometheus Beta, fostered by dissident scientists who oppose the UN. As they began to evolve, the UN discovered them at a crucial stage and battleships tried to bake off the surface of the planet with fusion weapons. All human life was eliminated but the ELFs learned how to adapt, survive and fight back. In 2287The game mentions the date as 2187 but this is probably wrong a human sublight colony ship with 2000 colonists was launched from the outskirts of known space towards a star 100 light years away, pushed by a combination of massive lasers, an ion drive and a fusion pulsedrive. Six months later, the UN High Command detonated a reserved doomsday device which created resonances along the Tal-Seto threads between stars, to rip apart the fabric of space-time. The resonances were set up along the FTL jump threads and rendered the Tal-Seto junctions dynamically unstable. All jump points disappeared along with interstellar travel and communications; humans with the community of ELFs in the solar system were cut off. They continued to fight until the ELFs triumphed. Eventually the ELF survivors proceeded to the second generation by 2295. They calculated that in 2297, a large section of the Milky Way would collapse, and each star along the junctions will be pulled into a massive black hole caused by the folding of space-time. Alternate timeline With the use of the Hype/Telecon system, Lexington was able to defeat the Dharma and turned the balance of the war. The end of the war saw the Alliance winning with the Alliance Treaty making the dissolution of the UN as a formal political organization and spelling out the same political realities places UN member sates back to their old roles as Line One or Line Two nations, and left the disenfranchised citizens of the former UN to fend for themselves. Those who could do so emigrated to the Alliance, but most to the colony worlds, and the exodus continued with renewed fervor, encouraged by the Alliance. Category:groups Category:Mission Critical